I dare you!!

I am now convinced that PowerPoint should only be used when absolutely needed.

Last week I shared the stage with experienced speakers at a District meeting. I was the only one without PowerPoint. Guess who's presentation was the only one without technological hitches?

Imagine me - Mr. PowerPoint, not using slides! You may be saying to yourself "This is stranger than truth". "Are my eyes deceiving me?"

Let me explain. In my presentation I had no need to show visuals and structured my presentation to require a lot of audience interaction. I opted for an extended Q&A session where I provided the questions to the audience and we discussed the questions and answers. There is no justification to use PowerPoint here.

As I saw my peers present on the stage, I realize how much work is still needed to train presenters. It seems so simple to me "Don't read your slides to your audience". You lose eye contact and your audience reads faster than you do, which means that text on your slides is a lose-lose situation.

Your natural tendency is it to glance at the slides, or turn and read the slides to your audience. The only way to make sure that you never read text to your audience is to not have text on your slides. This logic escapes most presenters.

I challenge you to present a slide show with text on the slides and overcome the natural urge to read the text to your audience. If you ever find a way to do it, then post a comment here. I dare you!!